Wangari Maathai Quotes

I believe - though I may be wrong, because I'm no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.

War is usually fought over diminishing resources, particulary those that we perceive to be extremely valuable.

When you fight -- fight to win

One of the problems that we have in the human rights community is that special interests often forget the interests of other victims, and there’s competition among victims expressions that are unnecessary.

We know that so much of the war that is happening is the attempt of one group to snatch the resources of another group.

You degrade us and then ask why we are degraded. You shut our mouths and ask why we don't speak. You close your colleges and seminaries against us and then ask why we don't know.

If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.

Thanks to my effort in the last 40 years, there has been more paper and film wasted.

We are not meant to find peace in this world. The spirit of life cannot exist without effort. Destroy the rivalries of man and nations and you will have destroyed all that makes for betterment and progress on Earth.

Usually, when you look around the world, people are killing each other, fighting over scarce resources.

Universal brotherhood is not even a beautiful dream. Antagonism is essential to man's greatest efforts.

Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.

My place, your place, slapped face, rat race.

For peace do not hope; to be just you must break it. Still work for the minute and not for the year.

Peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the existence of justice for all people.

Life is a fight for territory and once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don't want will automatically take over.

War represents the supreme failure of nations to resolve their differences. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, it is the most inefficient waste of lives and resources ever conceived.

Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.

Should I eat first or accuse the Master of the City of murder? Choices, choices. -Anita

We who claim to love peace and justice must always be careful that we do not use our righteousness to provoke the violent, and in this way bring about the conflict for which we, too, like other men, are hungering in secret, and with suppressed barbarity.

Men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness.

Today in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples is reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence.

Comparison leads to violence.

I do support the effort to investigate for crimes, war crimes committed by the Syrians and the Russians and try to hold them accountable.

Poverty - the greatest cause of human suffering on the planet - is itself exacerbated by conflict, competition for resources, injustice, even the global downturn and climate change. Diseases like AIDS, TB and malaria cannot be tackled without adequate resources. So you see everything is connected. In order to address any major cause of human suffering, we have to work together across many fronts.